Jaws of Ice
by crackinthecup
Summary: Yet another corpse is added to the tragedy of the Helcaraxë. A heads-up for character death.


"We have to keep going." Irissë tries for firmness, for urgency, truly she does, but only a croak wheezes past her cracked lips; every breath feels like legions of tiny frozen needles embedding into her lungs. Unease flutters in her chest as she darts another glance to the east and the shadows shuffling across the ice, one step further from them with each stabbing second. They have lingered too long.

Beneath a hulking bank of snow and ice a dozen _nissi_ sit, and now they stare up at her, whatever shreds of hope they have clung to curdling into dismay as the chill ossifies within them. The wind overlooks them here, at least. Huddling together might stave off hypothermia for a few hours, a few days if they are lucky. _It would be so easy …_

"She's right." Artanis reaches out, and bracingly she squeezes a shoulder. As if any of them could feel anything at all through the numbness and the layers. "We must move."

Slowly they piece themselves back together; they file out into the frost and the darkness. Irissë drags herself to the front, and for her sake the _nissi_ follow. Snowflakes swirl through the air, tiny frozen fragments that perch upon their eyelashes and dust their furs and cloaks in white powder. It would look almost delicate, almost _beautiful_ , but for the gnawing, hollowing cold that breathes into limb and bone and heart.

"Ammë!" Itarillë grizzles into the keening wind. "Ammë, I want to stay here!"

Elenwë and Itarillë have lagged, two lonely bundles severed from the group, still dwarfed by the ice-veined mound. Irissë spies Turukáno some way ahead as he half-turns toward his daughter's voice. She nods in his direction and does not wait to see the tension lined into his face become fractionally muted. She whirls round, and Turukáno settles once more into step beside his brother; Findekáno is glowering at nothing, clenching his jaw, piling silence about him, and Turukáno resumes speaking with lips and hands, too low, too fast, too unlike him. Again. The gales snatch the conversation from pricking ears, yet Irissë has no wish to hear any of it. Elentári knows she has heard enough of stained sand and ringing steel.

As Irissë begins to march toward Elenwë and Itarillë, a terrible cacophony groans from below. The ground splinters, the ice sheet beneath their feet capsizes, and mid-stride Irissë is caught in its upheaval. She staggers, and her sore muscles shriek at her as she clings to her balance. The _nís_ beside her topples so fast that nary a squeak has time to shatter into the air. Without thinking Irissë lunges out to grasp her about the waist.

"Thank you," she breathes, clutching onto Irissë's hand, standing stiff with shock, with dread, in her arms. But her gratitude founders beneath Itarillë's sudden cry.

"Ammë!" the child sobs, wide-eyed with fright, latching onto her mother's legs. The reverberations of the tumult must have speared through the ice for miles in all directions.

"Shh," Elenwë croons, stooping to brush her curls out of her face, taking her into her arms and pressing her close. "It's all right, little one. See? Nothing happened."

Irissë shakes the moment out of her mind. She puffs out a breath of exertion that mists and moils before her; she wills the drumming adrenaline within her to dissipate as she bends over the still-shaking _nís_ with words of comfort warm on her lips.

The next crack is much quieter. She does not know what has happened until screams pierce her eardrums, and with them the rush and roar of frozen water. For a split second of wildness, of denial, she watches Turukáno's features slacken, his skin sicken, and she does not understand. And then he is stumbling through the snow with Elenwë's name raw in his throat, and she feels her innards turn to slush. She runs, and the world howls around her.

But it is not the world at all. It is Turukáno, diving into the clamor and the coldness, plunging toward the two flailing specks of darkness and golden hair in the middle of the jagged pool that was not there scant minutes before, that should not have been there at all. It is the stuttering flutter of her fingers as in convulsive, ripping motions she yanks off her gloves, she tears at her layers of clothing.

"No – n-no …" she protests as arms close around her, as gently but firmly Findekáno holds her, stilling her movements, keeping her warm. She watches as Turukáno struggles back through the blank, lapping water, as Elenwë tries, and fails, and tries again to disentangle herself from her inflated, sopping clothing, as she bobs in the pool, head sinking ever lower. Irissë realizes her hands are quaking, prickling from the chill, scrabbling against Findekáno's forearms roughly enough to bruise.

A shimmer of silvered gold. Artanis stoops to retrieve her discarded gloves and gentles her hands into her grasp; she cradles them to her chest and painstakingly, one finger at a time, jerks her gloves back on. Above her head she meets her brother's gaze and nods.

Findekáno darts off, cutting through the crowd blackening the shores, and through the press of clothes and bodies she watches him crouch down beside Arakáno and thrust a hand into the water to hoist Itarillë into dryness.

There is a sickening whoosh even as Turukáno turns to swim back for Elenwë. The splintered ice vessels of the bank finally snap, and sway, and topple; ice groans and gnashes, as Elenwë sinks into the arctic grayness of the pool, crushed, broken beneath ruptured hunks of ice and finally dragged down into nameless depths.

Irissë thinks she screams. With arms strong as the steel she has learned to wield, staring with eyes that look like they have forgotten how to cry, Artanis holds her back as she slams into her like a wild creature, trying, _needing_ to tear herself away and into the deathly depths of water. "We have to keep going," Artanis echoes her own words, giving her a tiny squeeze, reaching up to smooth the pain from her face. _Keep moving._ They have to. They have to continue putting one foot in front of the other, through force of habit alone because they have long ceased to feel the ground beneath their feet. They have to cling to each murky glint of forgotten starlight far above the mists of this desolation. _Keep moving. Do not look back._

She falls limp, and Artanis lets her melt from her grip, slink to the shore where Turukáno kneels, body all a shudder as water sluices from him, clasping a sobbing, shivering Itarillë to his chest.

Irissë collapses to her knees beside him.

"Elenwë?" Hysteria froths within her. Hysteria and the guilt that feels like wire puncturing her throat. Tears melt the ice crystals studding her eyelashes.

Turukáno is shaking his head, clawing at Itarillë, hunching over her to shelter her dripping little body from the spite of the wind.

"She can't have …" Irissë swallows, a sob hooks into her throat. The pounding adrenaline within her finally, finally diffuses, leaches away from limb and heart in uselessness, and she feels suddenly, irrevocably, bottomlessly empty.

Findekáno is there, they all are, and he is tugging out a blanket from his pack. A pause, a quiver of hesitation. A dark spasm twists across his face, but then he is moving, draping the blanket over Turukáno's shoulders.

"Ammë?"

Irissë feels like someone has reached between her ribs and wrenched at her heart. The ache stifles with every contraction of muscle.

"Come here, sweetling." She turns, she opens her arms, and Itarillë blinks up at her before barreling right into her embrace. And Turukáno lets her, he lets her squirm out of his arms and slots a hand to his mouth as though to cup each silent lurching sob.

Finally purpose coalesces within her. With as much haste as she can manage, Irissë peels off Itarillë's soaked layers of clothing and swathes her in all the blankets she can find. Busy, busy hands. It stills her thoughts, shushes the beat of grief within her breast. Arakáno and Findekáno struggle to set alight the sickly slivers of wood they have gathered in Araman, where still vegetation rooted and clung and weathered. Nothing grows here, between jaws of ice. Irissë scoops Itarillë into her arms and carries her toward the first fitful glimmers of firelight. Away from her mother's tomb. She spots Findaráto bending over Turukáno by the rictus scored into the ice. He must have trudged back from the very front of the crowd with Nolofinwë not far behind him, and now, sucking in long, uneven breaths, he guides Turukáno to his feet.

"Come, Turno, let's get you warm," Findaráto murmurs, steering him with an arm round the shoulders toward the pale flicker of light Arakáno is busily stoking. The blanket slithers off his shoulders, and with lips thinning into a line Irissë has come to know all too well, Nolofinwë picks it up and swaddles his son more securely.

Someone, everyone, asks if they are to camp here.

"No," Artanis' voice bites into the wind. "We will resume the march in ten minutes."

"Where is Amil?" Itarillë blubbers into her shoulder, craning her little neck to peer at everyone assembled round them.

But Irissë finds herself unable to shove the words off her tongue. So instead she crushes her roughened lips to Itarillë's temple and chokes back her tears, and Itarillë wriggles into a more comfortable position, golden head drooping onto her shoulder. Her chubby fists curl into the fur there as she yawns. Irissë walks with her to the fire and sinks into a dropped kneel before it. Turukáno is staring into the crackling heart of embers, dry-eyed and stone-faced and entirely not there.

Findekáno leans over to whisper in her ear. "Is she all right?"

"Yes. She's asleep." It is strange to form words; she feels them slide off her lips. She watches him nod and slide a glance to Turukáno.

"I'd better leave."

"Yes." But Findekáno does not move. "I'll look after him," Irissë assures him in an undertone. His eyes snap up to hers, and she lays a gentle hand on his arm. "Go."

"You're needed elsewhere, Finno." Lalwendë drops into a crouch beside him. She is ruddy-cheeked with the fire and the chill and the countless desolate souls she has warmed in these bitter wastes. "Irissë's got as good a grip on it as anyone could hope for."

"I know she does." Irissë tightens her hand on her brother's arm. Little touches shared in the wailing emptiness of ice. It keeps them sane, at least. Proves that they are not alone in hoping.

Findekáno shoves himself off the ground and crumples into the darkness beyond the wavering circle of light.

"I'll check up on you later," Lalwendë promises with a graze of gloved fingers against her shoulder. She looks weary, like she is fraying already, but she stitches a smile onto her face all the same. "On all of you."


End file.
